It is not down in any map; true places never are.

Month: June 2010

Maybe it’s not so much of a want to talk about it, but maybe I feel like I need to.

The last few months have been an emotional roller-coaster of epic proportion.

Pickle is no longer living here. It brings tears to my eyes just typing it. Living it is something quite different. I’ve been told for quite some time that he would one day need to be some sort of assisted living scenario, I just didn’t think it would come so soon.

A couple months ago, I was FINALLY able to get him into treatment with a therapist who I actually saw him make leaps and bounds with. It was a good thing, it still is, but in the midst of that counseling a lot of things started to surface. I found out that there had been a lot more things going on between my children in the EX’s care than I could have ever imagined. Although these are not the sorts of things a mothers mind wants to imagine or even comprehend, I incidentally also caught him being sexually inappropriate and opportunistic.

Pickle was horrifically sexually abused as a toddler while residing with his biological mother, so this is a demon I am aware he struggles with. Hence, why I am constantly stressed and half-sleeping, listening, watching…..etc. Once you mentally become aware of such things, they don’t ever go away. I always knew this was possible, I just hoped it wouldn’t. With him entering puberty and the things he began revealing in counseling I developed a safety plan in which Jedi stayed the night at my parents house (they live three blocks away) and complete the rest of daily routine in typical fashion. He’d go to school, ride the bus home with his sister, do his homework, have dinner and at bedtime he’d go to my parents to sleep. He spent his weekend here, except for bedtime. It wasn’t easy. The hardest thing I ever had to do. It hurt like hell.

There were times when I felt I was betraying one for the other. It was hard to wrap my head around how I ended up in a position where my biological son would be sent away for his protection, while my adoptive son would remain with little inconvenience in his life. None of the counselors involved thought this was good, but agreed there was nothing else to do. As it turned out, with my younger son out of the house, older son started becoming opportunistic and, again, unimaginable, started to target my daughter. Typing it now, I still don’t know I came out the other end and somehow kept all these relationships in tack.

After having about a dozen people tell me over and over and over again that I had done everything that I could and that it was in his best interest to get him into intensive, inpatient treatment….I finally got it through my thick skull that it wasn’t giving up….it was actually the best hope there was not just for him but my other two children. The worst part of all of this, or the hardest thing for me to overcome mentally was that Children Services had to take custody in order for the treatment to be covered. They call this dependency. It’s when a child requires care beyond the ability of any guardian to provide. The costs of this treatment are astronomical. $500 PER DAY. Even with private funding from groups organized for this purpose, we were still looking at $200-$300 PER DAY, which only very wealthy people could afford. Beyond that, as I’ve been told, our home environment, with two younger children, is too stimulating for him at this time. So, I’ve got to learn more than I ever wanted to know about the Juvenile Court system as well because he had to be adjudicated and a bunch of other legal mumbo jumbo that is pointless to get into. I just keep telling myself that it could’ve been much worse. He could have done worse, outside of the home, been charged and that would have put him in sex offender program that likely would have caused him to be re-victimized because of his cognition issues/low I.Q. So he is safe and the other two children are too.

It’s just incredibly hard not having him here. Even though he required twenty-four hour supervision and our lives completely revolved around him, I wish there was something more I could’ve done. I wish I could heal his memories…his soul. I can’t even count the number of nights I’ve cried myself to sleep over all of this.

Whats made it even more emotional has been the final bow of the EX in the children’s life. I guess being under the microscope with everything that was going on with the kids was more than he could handle. A couple days after he was told that he would be required to go through dependency (drug/alochol) counseling and testing to remain involved through the pendency of Children Services involvement he decided that he wanted my husband to adopt the kids. If there was ever any hope in me for him to turn out to be a decent father figure to our children, much less just a decent human being….it is gone. I could have never imagined that he would sign away his kids, like possessions, in exchange for being let off the child support hook. It was his ONLY concern in the processing of the required legal paperwork. To say I am disgusted … is putting it mildly.

None of this is what I want for my children.

The only peace I have is holding onto the hope that all of this will allow all of the kids to be restored in ways that lead them to have healthy, happy, beautiful, full adult lives someday.